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Wednesday, 22 February 2012

Scenario Based Wargaming...

1985 was, to my mind, the year Warhammer touched the peak. The second edition of Warhammer had been out a year and now came the scenario packs with Blood Bath at Orc's Drift leading the way. Why do I regard this as the peak? Well I've always been a fan of scenario based wargaming eschewing points based battles as soul destroying exercises lacking the colour and depth that scenario based games ooze. This was also the time that WRG and Newbury ruled the roost in historical gaming when army lists were de rigueur with Ancient Britons fighting Han Chinese on featureless tabletops.

Mudat's Mercenary Half-Orc Maniacs (1985)

With my love of Tolkien and Moorcock, Warhammer crashing onto the scene in 1983 was a godsend. I'd picked up The Lidless Eye fantasy supplement for WRGAncients but found the rules impenetrable. Ok, first edition Warhammer was clunky and had some problems but it was a breath of fresh air, even encouraging cross genre games. Warhammer II fixed most of the problems and whilst it contained a points system for those that wanted it it was an open ended game that allowed you to create the army you wanted, even (shock, horror!) mixed race armies of good and bad.

The emphasis of the game was to have fun and play scenarios with special rules invented just for these battles (remember the serving wench in Orc's Drift who would go into a frenzy if the busker was killed?). Yes, there was an element of role-play/skirmish gaming to this all but it added to the colour and flavour so who cared whether it was 'balanced' or not (heck, show me a historical battle that was ever balanced?)

So I never worked out how much my Goblinoid army costed in points and I'm not changing that now. It either won or it lost, the game and the stories it created was the thing. I bought the models I liked, painted them and played with them and to my mind that is how it should be. I hated maths at school so why pick a hobby with it in?!

Unfortunately GW lost the taste for the scenario/campaign boxes and 1987 saw the third edition with its additional hardback Warhammer Armies book that started to organise the way Warhammer battles were to be played along points lines. Fine for tournament play, but it seeped into the psyche of the game that even friendly games ended up being 1500 or 2000 points and the colour and flavour of the game drained away...

Of course generating scenarios each week takes time and that is something most of us don't have these days so the attraction of points based line 'em up games grows. However this is just laziness on our part as there are many sources of ready made wargames scenarios that just require a modicum of effort to use with Warhammer.

First off is Charles Grant's Scenarios For Wargames released in 1981 by WRG (no, I can't believe that either). 52 generic scenarios most of which can be easily converted to Ancients (and therefore by default to Fantasy) and even those that can't such as the one with a train can be converted to fantasy with some thought (a mad Old World scientist's steam wagon?). Bit hard to get hold of these days, but eBay can be your friend if you are patient.

Of course you can invent your own or convert others. One of my favourites over the years was a Arab-Israeli scenario written by Bruce Rea-Taylor for his Challenger modern rules with a rear guard force dicing to stop retreating units join the rear guard before the mass of the enemy turns up. Many great games in many periods had with that one.

History is full of ideas, even more modern actions can be used to inspire. Operation Market Garden with dwarf balloonists and glider troops capturing a bridge behind enemy lines?

All in all I hope this whets the appetite and gives you some idea why I for one prefer scenario based games with their unique stories and background than lining up a set amount of troops and moving them across the board to meet some others in the middle. After all, if that is what I wanted to play I might as well try chess...

6 comments:

I just discovered your blog through your mention of it on TMP. Very cool stuff here, good recommendations for sources of scenarios. I'd been thinking about where to look for new scenarios or guides towards making my own, so thanks for that.

aw, takes me back (in advance I apologise for a rant...). Myself being a 4th/5th/6th edition player, I was pretty keen on doing scenario based warhammer games, either from WD, the citadel journal or making my own. Sadly 90+% of all games I played were the line 'em up and go point limit matches and any scenario I made up did have the points system in place rather than lists of regiments and characters like the old(er) school stuff such as orc's drift. Guess I was born a decade late if it comes to warhammer stuff! Wrote tons of scenario's and campaigns/campaign systems and seldom could get anyone to play anything other than "pitched battle" :( Still, I fondly remember my retooling of "the Kalamata Conflict" -which was a citadel journal-published Epic campaign (Eldar vs Imperials)- to Warhammer Fantasy (High Elves vs Empire). And the times we tried to flesh out the White Dwarf (195) "rough outline" of "Schuster's Last stand". Sadly I never managed to convince my two regular opponents (a friend and my brother) to try the warhammer Fantasy variant of the Battle of Waterloo (a 3-battle campaign, Bretonnians -Napoleon- vs High Elves-Britsh and Enmpire-prussians)

Just FYI really (I might get around to writing a post on it) But the forces in the Citadel Journal Dolgan Raiders scenario for WFBII are quite fairly balanced by points. Might be worth reverse engineering other WFBII scenarious to see how they stack up as well...

I've seen the Grudge of Drong from 4th/5th - and these are not in the same league as WFBII - just a series of pitched battles of an enforced point size linked together by a story.

That type of gaming leads to players learning how to make the best of sub-optimal combat units in different situations rather than picking only troop types that will win in a standard hand to hand situation.I have always played with fully painted models, many of today`s gamers buy a unit, try it out un- painted and in some cases not even glued together and if the unit does not "win" after a couple of goes then it never gets painted or even gets shelved. Using painted models is an investment of time and gives motivation to think how to get the best out of what you have.

That type of gaming leads to players learning how to make the best of sub-optimal combat units in different situations rather than picking only troop types that will win in a standard hand to hand situation.I have always played with fully painted models, many of today`s gamers buy a unit, try it out un- painted and in some cases not even glued together and if the unit does not "win" after a couple of goes then it never gets painted or even gets shelved. Using painted models is an investment of time and gives motivation to think how to get the best out of what you have.